Real Salt Lake GM thinks coach gets ‘bad rap’ on tactical abilities

Tears streamed down Pablo Mastroeni’s face as he read the responses.

It was 2015, Mastroeni’s second year coaching after retiring as a player, and the Colorado Rapids had finished with the second-worst record in Major League Soccer.

So the young coach asked his players to complete an anonymous 13-question survey. It asked things such as, “Did you understand my tactics?” and “How did you like the way I managed?”

The feedback he got was brutal.

“I literally was crying because everything I thought, it was the opposite,” Mastroeni said.

But in 2023, as coach of Real Salt Lake, he has his team buzzing — and winning. RSL sits third in the Western Conference — just four points from first — and hasn’t lost in nine games. It has six road wins — tied for the most in franchise history (2012, 2013). Draft Kings gives RSL the 12th-best odds to win the MLS Cup.

And RSL owes it partially to Mastroeni’s growth as a coach, and the moment he realized he wasn’t who he thought he was.

Lessons from Europe, and the three pillars

Mastroeni’s players in Colorado wrote that he changed tactics too often, and that his feedback was so impassioned that it actually hurt more than it helped.

So he took a trip to Europe to learn from some of the game’s best clubs and coaches. A week with Tottenham and Mauricio Pochettino. Another week with Arsenal and Arsène Wenger.

Mastroeni learned every coach is unique. That meant if he wanted to succeed as a coach, he had to stay true to himself and his principles.

One of the things Mastroeni implemented for the 2016 season was changing the rules in the Rapids locker room and setting a standard for how his players behaved. Colorado finished second in the Supporters Shield race and he was a candidate for Coach of the Year.

Mastoeni explained his coaching philosophy as having three pillars: psychology, emotion and intelligence.

Under the psychological pillar sits how Mastroeni can ensure players stay competitive through a lack of playing time. The way he’s affected that this season, he said, is through constantly rotating the starting lineup. He insisted that using nearly every player on the roster at some point this season had little to do with injuries or a tight schedule.

“That keeps everyone engaged,” Mastroeni said.

Then there’s the emotional pillar, which the RSL coach ties to motivation. For instance, Mastroeni’s background with the U.S. Men’s National Team during his playing days allows him to speak to his players about what it takes to get there, he said.

“Speaking from a place of experience really allows me to have, I think, the type of — clout isn’t the right word — but the type of respect, maybe, of someone that’s walked in the shoes that they want to walk in to achieve their dreams,” Mastroeni said.

The tactical side of soccer is enveloped in the intelligence pillar. Mastroeni said he can’t assume every player who comes to him understands tactics at the same level, so he has had to learn how to communicate the game in a way anyone — an 18-year-old rookie, ownership, media, fans — can understand. When he got into coaching, he called Bruce Arena, who now helms the New England Revolution, for advice.

“He goes, ‘If you can’t explain it to a 6-year-old, you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,’” Mastroeni said.

Mastroeni’s philosophy

Longtime RSL fans remember when the team employed a 4-4-2 diamond formation and dominated the league that way. One of the hallmarks of that tactical system was that former coach Jason Kreis never deviated from it, forcing opposing teams to adjust.

That’s essentially how Mastroeni approaches coaching, sans diamond.

“Good teams can switch things,” Mastroeni said. “Great teams force the other teams to adapt to them. That’s my philosophy. ... We don’t change for anyone.”

RSL plays a 4-4-2 with their outside backs high up the field, a winger pinched in, a striker threatening the highest defensive line, and a forward able to fill pockets of space. Those core principles exist whether it’s preseason, practice or road games, Mastroeni said.

When it comes to making substitutions, it’s not as simple as like-for-like positional swaps, or a wholesale change in formation at a certain point of the game. Mastroeni said he takes into account the relationships players have with each other when he’s making those in-game changes.

“Those relationships are spawned from consistency playing in the same system,” Mastroeni said.

The way RSL has played over the last several weeks is a byproduct of not deviating from the game model and continuing to play as many guys as possible.

“I think last year was a good introduction as to how we wanted to do it,” Mastroeni said. “And I think this year, the guys have just taken it all on and the guys that were here last year have really helped the guys coming in to to adapt.”

Before arriving at RSL, Mastroeni coached the Colorado Rapids from 2014-17, then became an assistant with the Houston Dynamo. He feels he’s improved greatly as a tactician, particularly when it comes to attacking.

“I used to think, when I was a younger coach, that creativity is spawned by allowing people to be creative,” Mastroeni said. “What I learned was that’s actually called chaos because there’s no structure. ... I think it’s being able to articulate clearly what we want to do on the offensive side, but then from that structure, allowing for creativity. That’s a big part of my learning curve and a really important part.”

A ‘bad rap’

General manager Elliot Fall has seen and heard the criticism of Mastroeni — mainly that he isn’t adept at the X’s and O’s of the game. Fall recently said that specific criticism isn’t warranted.

“If I’m being honest, I think Pablo gets a really bad rap on a lot of that stuff,” Fall said. “I think the ‘Pablo is not a tactician’ take is a little tired and a little unfair.”

Fall said he has seen firsthand just how meticulous Mastroeni is on tactics behind the scenes with players. He defended Mastroeni’s intelligence for the game of soccer, and said he knows what the coach is like behind the scenes and the kind of “really, really detailed, tactical conversations” he is always having.

When Mastroeni talks to reporters after games, his answers often seem to transcend what actually occurred on the field. Almost like instead of talking about the game, he touches on life and human nature.

Fall agreed that Mastroeni speaks that way, but said it’s a far cry from who he is in his job.

“It is not the same as his public persona,” Fall said. “To some degree, I guess what I’m saying is I think his public persona is only a fraction of what Pablo actually is as a coach and as a manager.”

Fall cited Mastroeni’s experience at soccer’s highest levels — from the MLS Cup to the World Cup — as evidence that he knows the game better than most.

“He’s seen every scenario,” Fall said. “So the nuances of tactically how things work the decisions that have to be made on the field in real time, he understands it as well as anybody. I think he gets it.”

Former RSL midfielder Kyle Beckerman lobbied for Mastroeni to become the team’s permanent head coach during his interim stint. The two have a close relationship from their playing days on the USMNT.

Beckerman defended Mastroeni’s abilities as a tactician. But he also said that the coach’s best and potentially most important skill is his ability to relate to and communicate with players.

“Pablo is going to have the whole tactical side of the game covered,” Beckerman said. “But the bigger thing [than] wins and losses is where’s my team at mentally and where’s my team at physically.”

Always learning

RSL got off to a rocky start this season. After a road win, it lost four straight games. In another four-game stretch, the team didn’t score a single goal.

While Mastroeni’s message to the players was to stay the course, some fans made it clear they wanted him out, taking to social media to call for his firing.

But with the team’s recent upswing and the way Fall talks about him, it appears Mastroeni will be RSL’s coach for the foreseeable future. While the announcement of his permanent hire didn’t come with details, Fall said at the time that the club expects “success for years to come under his leadership.”

Fall said Mastroeni is always learning and looking for ways to improve himself. He also credited the coach for finding a way to push past the rough start to the season and that there was “never a question as to whether he had the support of the group or the locker room.”

“Pablo is an unbelievable leader and a really authentic person and authentic leader,” Fall said. “Those are things that you have to have, and I think in a lot of ways are the most important attributes of somebody in his role. He can identify with the players and he can do it on a genuine level. He does a tremendous job of that.”

While Mastroeni has since retired his exit surveys, he gets player feedback from the members of RSL’s leadership council — Justen Glad, Zac MacMath, Marcelo Silva and Damir Kreilach. When the team was going through a rough stretch, Mastroeni said, MacMath went to him and said it might be a good idea for him to meet with all the players individually.

“It’s not about what I want to do,” Mastroeni said. “It’s about what the team needs from me. ... I’m a steward to help them achieve what they want.”

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